


Happy Birthday, Evan Lorne

by nagi_schwarz



Series: Foxtrot [58]
Category: Stargate Atlantis, Stargate SG-1
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-22
Updated: 2016-02-22
Packaged: 2018-05-27 10:21:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6280690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagi_schwarz/pseuds/nagi_schwarz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the MM10 (or rather, 15) at <a class="i-ljuser-profile" href="http://ushobwri.livejournal.com/profile"><img class="i-ljuser-userhead"/></a><a class="i-ljuser-username" href="http://ushobwri.livejournal.com/">ushobwri</a>. Write your favorite character's birthday. I can't say that Evan Lorne is my favorite character of all time, but he sort of is right now, so I went with it. Set pre-SG-1 and Season 7 SG-1.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Happy Birthday, Evan Lorne

The thing about birthdays on base was that they were basically excuse for the men to get drunk and eat too much junk food and to then go off base and get laid. Evan's memories of birthdays were always awkward, his mother hovering apologetically while all of the other kids on the commune and their mothers plied him with gifts that were well-meaning and intended to cure his strangeness (his strangeness being that he was like all the other boys at school who liked fighter jets and fast cars and slingshots and BB guns and wanted to be a hero and a soldier one day). So he accepted handmade dolls and more art supplies (no one in the Lorne household could ever have too much in the way of art supplies) and other gifts intended to inspire mindfulness and thoughtfulness and inner peace and smiled politely, and no one (save perhaps his mother) was ever the wiser to the fact that he felt horribly out of place in his own home and in his own skin.

He'd thought the Air Force was the answer. Not as aggressive as the Marines or the Army, not the enforced close quarters of a battleship or sub like in the Navy. He'd always wanted to fly, be fast, be free, leave the world behind, and the Air Force was his ticket to the skies. Only he didn't fit in there either. (For one thing, he liked kissing boys at least as much as he liked kissing girls, and no one could ever know that.) For all that he'd been the most traditionally masculine boy on the commune, compared to all of the other guys he was training and flying with, he was a precious princess. None of them had ever hand-woven their own clothes or learned to paint henna tattoos for their sister and all her friends (if they were sneaking into a sleepover, it was for more carnal pursuits), and Evan's tendency toward discussion and gentleness – when he wasn't commanding men, at any rate – was usually a source of ribbing. When he became too touch-starved, he'd go to bars with the rest and play up his uniform a little bit to get some action, but he didn't see getting laid as a sport or a pastime, and so getting drunk and hiring strippers on his birthday seemed like an awful idea.

The best way to get the guys off his back about his birthday was simply to never tell them when it was. He knew all of theirs. For all they made fun of him for being a 'delicate flower' (half of them had nicknamed him _Rosie_ ), his baking skills were nonpareil (Grandma had trained as a pastry chef in Paris back in the day), and the cakes and cupcakes and cookies he made for the others guys' birthdays (he always made sure to know their favorites) were very popular. If he didn't go drinking and wenching with them, well, he'd been slaving away in the kitchen, and he was tired. Maybe next time.

There was a strange relief in being recruited into the SGC even though it meant he was essentially grounded. It was full of oddballs just like him. Hawkins liked to make intricate origami models that required dozens and dozens of individually folded components. Kept his hands busy, he said. Old man was stationed in Japan back in the day. Passed on the skill. Edwards liked to cook, and he played the sitar. Sanchez was an amateur magician, always had a pack of cards on him to do card tricks. (One time those went over badly with an alien planet's locals who thought he was doing actual magic and almost burnt him at the stake for being a witch.) Ritter listened to opera. (That might have earned him more ribbing if Colonel O'Neill wasn't a notorious opera fan himself.) So no one cared if Evan liked to bake or paint (though he rarely had time for either when he spent so much time off-world).

He still didn't tell them when his birthday was, though. Which was probably how he ended up spending most of it in the SGC infirmary after Woeste and Menard instigated a game of football with some of the juvenile Unas on the mining planet and Evan was tackled and dog-piled by some of them. Apparently Woeste had forgotten that not everyone had on the team had played football at the Air Force Academy. So Evan was shipped back through the gate for a check-up. Prognosis? Cracked ribs. Frasier bandaged him up and gave him some painkillers, though she warned him to try the Tylenol and easy stuff first. And then she sent him home. Given that she'd been poking around in his medical file, there was every chance that she'd see it was his birthday, and he cringed, waiting for the sympathy, for the guilt on the others' faces when they realized what had happened to him on his special day. But he made it out of the base and down the mountain to his apartment without anyone being the wiser. He called his mom and his sister (who let him also speak to his niece and nephew), he thanked them for the cards and money they'd sent (his niece and nephew had sent him pictures they'd drawn, and they were adorable kids, he loved them, but they clearly had not inherited the Lorne gene for art). He baked himself some cupcakes so he could light a candle and make a wish and blow it out with one of them and take the rest to base tomorrow when he went back to serve his desk duty before shipping back out to the Unas Mines, and then, for the first time in a long time, he painted.

And it was okay.


End file.
